ATV hatch opening now in progress

Mission controllers at ESA’s ATV Control Centre in Toulouse gave the ‘go’ for opening at 15:51 GMT (16:51 CET) and the crew are now in the process of physically opening the hatch. The process takes about 15 minutes. Immediately afterwards, the crew will insert scrubbers to scrub the air inside ATV (removing any possible small particles of debris), which will run for about three hours.